Bus Drivers, School
What the pay figures show
- Massachusetts comes first for bus drivers, school on every measure. $65,170 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $48,910 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For bus drivers, school, Massachusetts's $65,170 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $48,910. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$47,920
People doing it
402,930
Highest paid
$65,170
MA
Best off, really
$48,910
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$29,240
Highest tenth
$65,730
Lowest, really
$17,166
AL
States with data
51
National average
$48,430
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $17,166 up to $48,910.
- 402,930 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $47,920. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $47,920 in the middle.
- The nominal spread for bus drivers, school approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $17,166 to $48,910, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in bus drivers, school is 402,930 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- 51 jurisdictions report bus drivers, school, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Bus Drivers, School
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $29,240 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $47,920 |
| Top tenth earn over | $65,730 |
| This salary | $47,920 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Bus Drivers, School
The national median for this job
$47,920around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $29,240 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $47,920 |
| Top tenth | $65,730 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Bus Drivers, School, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Alabama · $17,630 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Massachusetts · $65,170 |
| Spread | $47,540 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $44,490 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $45,783 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $63,370 | $53,098 | $48,910 |
| ND | $50,790 | $42,990 | $48,537 |
| MA | $65,170 | $51,606 | $47,678 |
| VT | $56,580 | $46,003 | $47,605 |
| CT | $61,520 | $48,978 | $47,235 |
| RI | $58,700 | $47,564 | $46,902 |
| AK | $54,200 | $45,730 | $44,959 |
| UT | $52,890 | $42,324 | $44,550 |
| NJ | $59,430 | $48,196 | $44,264 |
| CA | $61,040 | $49,371 | $43,854 |
| MD | $56,450 | $45,220 | $43,495 |
| AR | $45,500 | $37,514 | $43,365 |
| NE | $47,760 | $39,086 | $43,248 |
| IA | $46,320 | $38,250 | $43,090 |
| HI | $59,090 | $46,611 | $42,916 |
| IN | $48,020 | $39,377 | $42,716 |
| WY | $45,520 | $38,755 | $42,660 |
| CO | $52,620 | $42,853 | $42,269 |
| MO | $46,880 | $38,582 | $42,046 |
| NY | $56,640 | $45,229 | $42,024 |
| MT | $46,220 | $37,902 | $42,000 |
| WI | $47,760 | $39,054 | $41,950 |
| OH | $45,860 | $38,484 | $41,916 |
| NM | $45,470 | $37,727 | $41,740 |
| ID | $46,250 | $37,744 | $41,284 |
| TN | $44,510 | $37,944 | $41,014 |
| NH | $50,990 | $43,150 | $40,961 |
| KS | $45,860 | $36,758 | $40,858 |
| KY | $44,830 | $36,749 | $40,621 |
| ME | $48,640 | $39,299 | $40,474 |
| MN | $48,940 | $39,699 | $40,337 |
| DC | $55,450 | $44,573 | $40,227 |
| VA | $50,190 | $40,382 | $40,082 |
| MI | $46,380 | $37,726 | $40,056 |
| PA | $47,530 | $38,911 | $39,909 |
| IL | $49,090 | $39,339 | $39,794 |
| TX | $44,490 | $37,928 | $39,030 |
| SD | $39,730 | $34,103 | $38,712 |
| AZ | $46,050 | $38,432 | $38,012 |
| GA | $44,950 | $36,653 | $37,904 |
| OR | $51,270 | $39,440 | $37,662 |
| FL | $44,690 | $38,088 | $36,817 |
| SC | $39,900 | $33,744 | $36,215 |
| OK | $36,920 | $30,684 | $34,756 |
| DE | $42,390 | $34,455 | $34,714 |
| NC | $37,460 | $31,293 | $33,241 |
| NV | $37,280 | $32,134 | $33,135 |
| WV | $33,360 | $28,151 | $31,359 |
| MS | $30,640 | $25,666 | $29,402 |
| LA | $29,450 | $25,346 | $28,690 |
| AL | $17,630 | $15,444 | $17,166 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of bus drivers, school earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $47,920.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for bus drivers, school, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Washington, at $53,098.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for bus drivers, school. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Alabama, on $17,166.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for bus drivers, school, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $47,920, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for bus drivers, school model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $53,098, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms results for bus drivers, school rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Alabama anchors the distribution at $17,166. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.